Welcome to my blog, Scarlet and Dawn!
I have changed the name of my blog to reflect who I am. I am one woman, with two names and two families. This is my story of searching for my biological genealogy, my experiences in searching for my birth mother, birth father and my half siblings and cousins. It is about researching the families I connect with genetically and my adventures into the world of DNA testing. Thank you for stopping by.
Take care,
Dawn

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Thursday, February 4, 2016

I took my AncestryDNA test back in August of 2011 when it was in the "beta" stage of testing. When I first got my results, I didn't have very many matches. Fast forward 5 years and I have more matches than I ever thought possible. My only problem is that for the most part my matches are in the distant cousin category. Rather than have so many photographs of DNA maps I decided to put it in collage form so that it will be easier to see what is going on.

Let's take a look at how my ethnicities break down. My total ethnicity is 94% European and 6% West Asia. I have to admit that the West Asia and Finland/Northwest Russian percentages surprised me!

As you can see, I am 56% British, I am 15% Irish and 12% Scandinavian. I am not surprised by the Scandinavian genes do to the colonization of the British Isles by sea faring men of Norway and Sweden. What is the difference between my British genes and my Irish genes? What is it that makes this distinction between Ireland and Britain?

My trace origins are broken down as 5% Europe East, 3% Europe West, 2% Finland/Northwest Russia with the Iberian Peninsula and Italy/Greece ethnicities at less than 1%. Now with that 5% Eastern European, 3% of Western Europe and 5% Caucasus, I would have expected to some minute traces of European Jewish ancestry. These three geographic area's over lap in several countries. These three areas are known for having European Jewish ancestry, even in small percentages so this surprises me.

Considering some of the families I am researching have been in the United States since the late 1600's I am surprised that I have absolutely 0% of genes from Africa and 0% Native American genes either. I suspect that as Ancestry continues processing autosomal DNA their databases will be come larger and that some of these numbers will either increase of decrease over time.

As
of today, February 4th, 2016, Ancestry DNA shows that I have 215 pages
of matches! How is it possible to be genetically linked to so many
people and only have one 2nd cousin match who is like me, an adoptee. I
am pretty sure that we share common grandparents through my maternal
line of Honeycutt in North Carolina. I have three 3rd cousin matches and
510, 4th cousin matches! Then there are the hundreds of 5th to 8th
cousins which boggles my mind!

I
also have 6 new potential ancestor connections that are not already in
my tree. They are Martha Viannah Austin Rhea (1801-1858) and husband,
William Pryor Rhea (1792-1852), John Henry Porter (1803-1872) and his
wife, Sarah "Sally" Shrew 91810-1852), Mary Ann Josephine Henderson
(1864-1938) and her husband, Allen Green Newman (1864-1935).

And
let's not forget I have 9 DNA Circles! Five of these circle are for my
maternal line which clearly confirms everything Barbara told me when we
first talked. The other 4 circles are for my paternal lines which proves
that I do in fact have the right lines. These matches are all for 3rd
and 4th great grandparents. I know I am following the right genetic
path, I just wish I could find closer connections! My Family Tree DNA Results (uploaded from AncestryDNA results)

For comparison purposes only to show that basically both Family Tree DNA and Ancestry similar results for my tree of DNA. There are a some significant differences in percentages but I expected this considering Family Tree DNA has the larger database. Here are my results from Family Tree DNA, as expected I am94% European and 6% Central/South Asian. Here is how that broke down the percentages, I am 54% British Isles, 24% Western and Central Europe, 8% Southern Europe, 5% Eastern Europe, 3% Scandinavian and 6% Central/South Asia. The biggest differences are the Western and Central Europe which comes in at 24% vs the combined percentages of 10% for these areas with AncestryDNA, while the Southern Europe is 8% and AncestryDNA has it as less than 1%. While the results for my Scandinavian percentages dropped a whopping 9%.

I am hoping that at some point this year I can upgrade my mtDNA Plus results to a full mtDNA to help break down a maternal brick wall and hopefully learn which of these ethnicities I inherited from Barbara. I will probably never know the exact ethnicities from my paternal lines because while I have at least 5 half siblings I don't know if any of them are male. As an adoptee, finally knowing what my ethnic heritage is has given me something I longed for once I found out I was pregnant with my son Kenny, that I know where I come from genetically.

Editor's Note: Ancestry results are in blue and Family Tree DNA is in green.